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Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been banned for life from running for political office, a high court ruled on Tuesday.

The move by the Peshawar High Court appears to end the possibility that Musharraf, who returned to the country last month after four years in self-imposed exile, will stand in the May 11 parliamentary elections as he had hoped.

NPR's Julie McCarthy reports that "it is reportedly the first time that a court in Pakistan has imposed a lifetime ban on contesting elections, and Musharraf's lawyers question the legality."

The case against Musharraf, a former general who first seized power in a 1999 military coup, stems from his declaration of martial law and a subsequent campaign against the judiciary in which some 60 judges were placed under arrest.

According to Al-Jazeera, the Peshawar High Court judges:

"... barred him from running and put him under house arrest in connection with a pair of court cases against him.

"One involves his decision to fire senior judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, while in power. The other relates to the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved — allegations he has denied."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sold the rights to his memoir to HarperCollins, the publishing house announced Tuesday. The book will be "a full and frank look at his public and private life — from his formative years in Queens, New York, his long record of fighting for justice and championing government reform, his commitment to public service, and his election and service as the 56th Governor of New York State," according to a statement. The New York Times quoted an anonymous source at HarperCollins claiming that the publisher is now trying to drop a biography of Cuomo by New York Post columnist Fredric U. Dicker because of a potential conflict of interest. Asked about the Times' report on Dicker's book, HarperCollins spokesperson Tina Andreadis said in an email that "All I can say that right now [is that] we have a book under contract."

Richard Brody explains "Why The Great Gatsby Endures" in a New Yorker article: "The Great Gatsby is, above all, a novel of conspicuous consumption — not even of appetite but of the ineluctable connection between wealth and spectacle."

A lost poem by Vita Sackville-West — the English writer most famous for her love affair with Virginia Woolf — was discovered when it fell out of a book as scholars were doing conservation work in her library. A love poem written in French, it is addressed to her mistress, the writer Violet Trefusis. According to a translation printed in The Guardian, it reads in part: "I tear secrets from your yielding flesh/Giving thanks to the fate which made you my mistress."

Caspar Henderson writes about the (unexpectedly fascinating) history of the octopus in Western literature: "Appetite, loathing, and lust have certainly played big parts in human imaginings of these beasts. But we should take a cue from the Minoans who portrayed them in images that, even after 3,500 years, almost sing out loud in celebration of their strangeness and beauty."

For The Millions, Michael Bourne looks at the changing role of literary critics: "However critics rise to the challenge of the information overload facing readers today, rise we must, because as much information there is on sites like Amazon and GoodReads and the rest, there is too often precious little real intelligence. This is the paradox of the information age: the proliferation of data points makes smart criticism more relevant, not less."

The ancient statues depict young men, naked and muscled, in their physical prime. The two sculptures were supposed to celebrate the purity and kinetic beauty of ancient sport in a traveling exhibit, "The Olympics — Past and Present."

But when the Greek exhibit reached the conservative Muslim emirate of Qatar, the two statues were hidden by a screen of sheer black cloth.

"The outlines of the statues were visible, but not the details," says Maria Vlazaki, the Greek Culture Ministry's director-general of antiquities and cultural heritage. "They wanted to hide the nudity." Vlazaki was part of a Greek delegation that traveled to the Qatari capital Doha for the opening of the exhibit in March.

One statue is dated to 520 B.C. and is a long-haired kouros from the sanctuary of Apollon Ptoios in Boeotia, says Evridiki Leka, curator of the sculpture collection at the National Archaeological Museum, where both marble pieces are housed.

The other depicts a young athlete with short curls. It's a Roman-era copy of a famous bronze (now lost) by the ancient sculptor Polykleitos, who designed male nudes with mathematical scale and artistic purity.

Vlazaki says the Qatari organizers of the exhibit asked for the two statues, as well as several small bronze nudes that remain on display. But Vlazaki says there were "objections from above" after the statues arrived. The Qatari organizers refused to display them uncovered, as the Greeks requested.

"So they agreed to send them back," Vlazaki says. "It was all done with minimal drama."

Culture Clash

Both countries are playing down the incident as a minor culture clash.

Greece, which is deep in recession and struggling through an epic debt crisis, needs Qatar. The energy-rich emirate said in January that it would invest up to $1.3 billion in a joint fund with Athens.

Meanwhile, the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, bought six private islands in the Ionian Sea for his wives and children.

Others criticized Qatar, which aspires to be a global center of culture. The country has spent billions on museums and art collection, "a remarkably sophisticated exercise at nation-building through art," Hugh Eakin wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2011.

Peter Aspden of the Financial Times wrote that Qatar must "get over its inhibitions" if it ever wants to host the Olympics. (The country led unsuccessful bids for the 2016 and 2020 games).

"There is no understanding of ancient Greek culture and its invention of sporting competition without recognizing its worship of the human form," Aspden wrote. "You just cannot have a serious exhibition on the ancient Olympics without addressing the theme of nudity."

The Qatar Museums Authority said in a statement that the decision was "not due to censorship" but was rather "based on the flow of the exhibition, awareness of the outreach to all schools and families in Qatar, and desire to be sensitive to community needs and standards."

A Doha Debates poll last year showed that 60 percent of Arabs support censorship of art that could be "inappropriate" and offend "religious beliefs."

Vlazaki says she respects Qatar's decision on the statues and says she still views the exhibit as a success.

"Qatar is still opening itself to Europe and the West," she says. "It accepts a lot, but there are still things that it's not ready to accept."

The statues are now back in Greece's National Archaeological Museum.

"The Olympics — Past and Present" runs until June 30 at the Alriwaq Doha exhibition space near the Museum of Islamic Art.

For Jason Collins, coming out just might prove a winning career strategy.

Before this week, the NBA center seemed like just another second-tier professional athlete, slouching toward retirement while still in his 30s. But all that changed overnight when Collins acknowledged he was gay in an interview with Sports Illustrated magazine published Monday.

Now everyone from President Obama on down is talking about him, and most of the words have been supportive. That kind of attention could well prove bankable, says Marc Ippolito of Burns Entertainment, a firm that brings together Fortune 500 companies and celebrities for endorsement.

"It makes him recognizable and definitely puts him in a much more unique place for a marketer," says Ippolito.

Bob Witeck, a gay-marketing strategist and corporate consultant was less cautious in his assessment, telling Newsday that Collins stands to reap millions of dollars from speaking engagements and endorsements from companies seeking to capture more of a U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adult population whose annual buying power he pegs at almost $800 million."

Even so, openly gay is largely an "untested area" when it comes to sports endorsements, says Glenn Selig, chief strategist for The Publicity Agency. He thinks a lot depends on whether Collins, who becomes a free agent after this season, plays next year.

As USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt writes, "At 34, Collins' career is nearing its conclusion. If this was his last season, will it be because there is no longer a spot for Collins because of his diminishing skills or sexual orientation?"

But Bob Dorfman, editor of Sports Marketers Scouting Report, told CNN that while he doesn't think Collins is "going to be a major spokesman ... he could certainly earn seven figures off this."

Collins already has a sponsorship contract with Nike Inc., which was quick to praise Monday's revealing announcement, saying it admires his "courage" and is "proud that he is a Nike athlete."

"Nike believes in a level playing field where an athlete's sexual orientation is not a consideration," says Brian Strong, a spokesman for the footwear and clothing giant.

According to Adweek:

"On a pure advertising level, [Collins'] only known sponsor, Nike, seems like the perfect company to push the Washington Wizard center's courageous public stance as an opportunity to further solidify the brand's recent history of supporting gay rights. Last week, Nike signed WNBA rookie Brittney Griner to what's reportedly a big contract only days after she stated her homosexuality. And 10 months ago, the sneakers giant held its first-ever Nike LGBT Sports Summit in its Portland, Ore., hometown."